Clever communicating

How do you communicate with your customers to make sure they stay happy and keep on being your customers, asks Kate Bell.

It used to be easy to keep in touch with your customers; send out a catalogue once or twice a year, maybe send round a salesman with some nice brochures. In the days of emails, tweets, and social media, things are a lot more complicated, and businesses need to put a lot more thought into which methods of communication are most suitable, says Phil Hutchison, UK Marketing Director of Pitney Bowes.

You’re probably familiar with the name Pitney Bowes as being the company that invented the mail franking machine, but as new methods of communication have become popular, Pitney Bowes has moved on too, and now provides software, hardware and services designed to provide integrated physical and digital communications. Hutchison explains: “While our background is deeply involved with cost effective mailings, we’ve moved with the digital era and have acquired companies and developed our own technologies to make sure we can help companies with their customer communications.”

“It’s important to get marketing right, because research tells us that 90 percent of customers are irritated by poor communications.” Phil Hutchison

Obviously, at the moment the economic climate means companies are facing challenges, and the allocation of resources is one of the most significant. Many small and medium sized companies don’t have the budget to have a dedicated marketing team, so that role is part of another multi-function job, performed by office managers or the business owner. This means that an organisation may run the risk of missing out on some of the key parts of communicating with their customers.

The team at Pitney Bowes says there are numerous ways companies can do different things to ensure their communications are effective and help build long term profitability.